“The Palestinian Arabs are the first people in history to be granted a hereditary refugee status, passed down from father to son to grandson and great-grandson.”

From Wikipedia:

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a relief and human development agency, providing education, health care, social services and emergency aid to over 4.7 million Palestine refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. *It is the only agency dedicated to helping refugees from a specific region or conflict*. It is separate from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, which is the only other UN agency aiding refugees, dedicated to aiding all refugees in the world. [emphasis mine—GI]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Relief_and_Works_Agency_for_Palestine_Refugees_in_the_Near_East

UNRWA was established by the UN way back in 1948, at Israel’s creation. Note, there was no similar agency created for all the Jews expelled from Muslim countries on Israel’s creation.

In the sixty-plus years since then, very few Muslim countries have allowed “Palestinians” to become citizens—because they are more valuable as a political tool against Israel if they are *still* considered “refugees”.

The “refugees” and their descendants have now grown to almost 5 million—or almost the population of Israel itself. If all these people flooded into Israel, she would instantly become a Muslim-majority country, and would cease to be the vibrant democracy she is today.

Here’s UNRWA’s uncritical take on the invasion:

UNRWA deplores deaths of Palestine refugees – Commissioner-General’s statement

16 May 2011

Filippo Grandi: I deplore the deaths of Palestine refugees in Lebanon, the occupied Golan Heights and the occupied Palestinian territory.

As Commissioner-General of UNRWA, I continue to follow the situation confronting the population we serve with concern and I echo the call on all parties to show restraint and ensure that civilians are not killed or injured.

These sad events demonstrate once more the vulnerability of the Palestine refugees we serve.

They underline the need for a just and durable solution, based on UN resolutions, to resolve the plight of those who have endured statelessness, exile and dispossession for 63 years.

At a time of profound and far-reaching change in the region, I urge the parties to address what the Secretary-General has called the “unsustainable status quo in the Arab-Israeli conflict” including the fate of the refugees.

I fear that failure to do so will only lead to more instability and further loss of life.

http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=973

“the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is the *only* permanent UN agency for any “refugee” population.”

Yes, indeed. The UN has 2 agencies that deals with refugees – one for the Arab refugees from Israel and one for all the other refugees in the world, from every war zone and disaster zone everywhere.

The Arab refugees is the only refugee problem that haven’t been solved in over 6 decades in spite of the fact that there are 22 Arab states that control 14 million square kilometers of land (about 5,400,000 sq miles), while Israel’s size is about 0.14% of that. Yet they couldn’t find any corner in that huge land mass to resettle their Arab brethren.

The refugee problem on both sides was a result of Arab aggression. They invaded Israel with the intention to eliminate it, and expelled or scared into fleeing most of the Jewish communities from all the Arab ruled states, between 800,000 and a million people, a larger number than the Arab refugees from Israel. Some of the Jewish communities there predated the Arab-Muslim conquest of the Middle East by centuries and even millennia, going back to the Babylonian era and the Roman era, some possibly even earlier than that. Others have lived there since their ancestors were expelled from spain, another “Arab-Muslim homeland”. The Jews were also expelled from lands they more recently bought in Judea and Samaria, the Gaza strip, today’s Jordan and Syria, and all the Jews were expelled from east Jerusalem. Most of these Jews were resetteled in Israel. Back then the waves of Jewish refugees from the Middle East were about equal in numbers to the existing population – mass immigration indeed. They had to leave their property behind, and Israel back then was a poor country that had to establish a policy of austerity and food rations to be able to support its growing population. Many of them lived in tent cities for years. And there was no UN aid for them. But finally they were resettled successfully. At least 60% of today’s Israeli Jewish citizens are descendants of at least one Jewish refugee from the Middle East.

Yet there was no place for the Arab refugees to be citizens in any of the 20+ Arab states with all their land and oil, except in Jordan for obvious reasons (it comprises about 80% of the original Palestine mandate), even though the refugees from Israel were only a small fraction of the Arab population of the Middle East, a number they would hardly notice had they taken them in, and with all the UN aid.

If you’re an Arab and your grandfather lived in Jaffa and you now live 10 miles from Jaffa in Judea & Samaria you’re a refugee that must be resettled in Israel even after a 23rd Arab state will be created in Judea & Samaria and the Gaza strip. Even if your grandfather was just a temporary worker in Jaffa you are a refugee since the UN’s special definition of a Palestinian refugee is anyone who lived in the Palestine mandate 2 years before the war.

Note that when India was divided to create Pakistan there was also a population exchange, except it was millions of people on both sides and not hundreds of thousands (who are millions now because their descendants are included, and they have some birth rate). They were all resettled in the states they fled to and you don’t hear their descendants today demanding a “right of return”. Note also that the descendants of the ethnic Germans who were expelled from Checkoslovakia as a result of the German aggression against Checkoslovakia don’t have a “right of return”. Those of them who demand it are considered far right. You attack, you lose, you take your refugees. Even more so if you created refugees on the other side.